Another piece, also coincidentally from TheNextWeb who reports how key Nokia is for WP with 59% of global WP sales as well as me rambling about the next Nokia WP8.

Well, let’s put some friendly context into the first part.

As awesome as that sounds, the market still is quite small for Windows Phone. It would be the bare minimum expectation that Nokia and its full force take the lead, given the minimal effort from the opposing camps.

It’s quite surprising really, because as ruthless as Samsung could be, they could snuff out any possibly competition before it becomes one by attacking WP at least half as strongly as they do with Android. But they’re more of a ‘see what’s popular and copy’ kind of thing – minimal risk, big gains – and right now, WP is still very much a big risk with only a potential of a big gain.

TheNextWeb points out that for Windows Phones, Nokia is more prominent than Microsoft. In fact, we heard a story a while ago showing Lumia was a more popular term than Windows Phone itself. No one searches for the OS, but the phones that give them prominence. Microsoft shouldn’t care really – it’s getting more of their OS to more people. Looking at Statcounter data, they see movement from 22% in January to 59% global sales last month, with things actually picking up in growth best in July.

Just yesterday however, we heard about Samsung’s 4.8″ Super HD Amoled display with dual krait 1.5GHz. Can Nokia compete with that? Well, Nokia’s been competing with HTC WP phones of technically higher specs and winning because of some fantastic design, build and Nokia related WP services. We may some how have lost the edge slightly due to Nokia Maps being shared across the platform but we could also view that as a strength of the Nokia brand. We are also yet to hear the full specs of Nokia’s WP8 regarding location department. Design and build wise, I think/hope we can trust Nokia’s designers to deliver yet again another clean, beautiful, striking, elegant design that bears the Nokia reputation for being a tank.

US again will be one of the key fighting grounds with Nokia keen to get some firm foundations. HTC still seems to be one upping Nokia here but HTC, Samsung and others have dropped from 54%, 36% and 10% to 36, 32% and 10% respectively since Nokia’s arrival. With no presence prior in the US, Nokia are making some small steps in the right direction.

But small steps aren’t good enough and we are looking at possibly one of the final make or break points for Nokia with WP8 handsets. They could deliver some key things the market and blogosphere has been wishing for:

PureView on Lumia

PureView. That’s an instant win in many people’s eyes. It’s unfortunate that the majority of reviews tended to look down on the Symbian counterpart of the Nokia 808 PureView but great that they also voice looking forward to seeing PureView on the 808.

Expectations: As far as we know the earliest this could possibly arrive is Spring – one year on after the 808’s announcement.

Why? Well, we’ve heard Damian and co mentioning that it would have taken another year if they had waited to put PureView on WP. Plus, we were told consumers would be climbing over themselves to get Nokia’s WP8 with people forgetting Nokia’s troubles by spring.

Could it arrive by September? It would be insanely awesome if it could, but it seems unlikely. Some have hoped that recent tweets from Stephen Elop praising PureView technology and PureView replacing his DSLR might suggest that Elop is using Lumia PureViews (because the same doubters would not believe Elop to use a Symbian phone).

I wouldn’t mind not having PureView but give me some Nokia Nseries grade camera quality (N8/N86)

Large Screen – almost phablet or phablet even

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There will always be people who think 4″ screens are already big enough, and are content with 3.5″. Lumia itself is working on a minimum of 3.7″. But there is an undeniable acceptance of phones with ever larger displays (and other gadgets with huge displays – the tablets).

4.7″, 4.8″ and surprisingly 5.4″ are gaining traction. Constantly having the web in your (large) pocket may be driving this demand and for me, that’s better on a larger display. Better for videos, better for pictures, better for games perhaps.

High resolution:

HD displays please. 800×480 is the bare minimum for 2010. With that said, there are many content with 360p nHD displays. But it is the norm to now expect at least 720p in your phone. Can you see the difference? Perhaps, perhaps not. On a larger screen, perhaps yes. It also depends on how good your eyes are and if the screen is pentile.

Moooar power

Despite WP8 being capable of up to 64 cores, we probably won’t be jumping into Quadcore any time soon with WP8. Well not Nokia’s WP8.

However, does Nokia need to go multicore? Yes and No.

No if they can achieve the same performance, and no if nothing is taking advantage of the multicore set up.

But yes for the sake of future proofing, yes for being easier to market and attract consumers who are still on the mindset that more numbers is better.

I’d like a bigger battery too or at least more optimisation.

Fantastic jaw dropping design

People want phones that look good and won’t break if you look at them wrong. Nokia’s got a great reputation for beautiful phones and thanks to the resurgence of Nokia fans pumping out invincible Nokia memes (and Nokia capitalising on that with their viral 900 hammer) people are getting the idea once again that the new Nokias are also pretty durable.

Be on time.

I don’t think I need to explain the importance of no delays, no lateness, no 6 month waits, eh?

Will this be enough? Anything else missed out? Probably I’ve missed out quite a few things, yes.

Everything from February 11, 2011 has been leading to this point. Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 coming together to bring Metro (or what ever it is now called) and the Windows experience further.

Nokia may not yet play such a critical role for tablets (ASUS/Surface may be top dog for that for now) but they are certainly critical and have been critical in ensuring WP survives long enough for the next iteration of the phone and PC OS to mature to new market expectations. I hope Nokia is rewarded for taking such a massive bet and placing so much trust and effort into Microsoft. It would be a shame to see someone else reap the fruits of Nokia’s toils. And that is why Nokia must be relentless.

Samsung and HTC bring improved WP8 devices (possibly to help chip tiny dents away from Android) but WP8’s overall success is by no means guaranteed and that means Lumia success is not guaranteed, which is a big no no for Nokia. As much as the naysayers would like to cheer, it’s not yet game over for Nokia and there are still a few cards to play for their comeback.

We might never see Nokia reach the same levels of success as before all the competition had become so strong, but there is still plenty of room left for a market with a successful Nokia in it. Nokia can come back to being the company that produces products that many, many millions love and adore, capturing many new Nokia fans with the feeling of awesomeness that current Nokia fans must have experienced one time or another.

Hey, thanks for reading my post. My name is Jay and I'm a medical student at the University of Manchester. When I can, I blog here at mynokiablog.com and tweet now and again @jaymontano. We also have a twitter and facebook accounts @mynokiablog and Facebook.com/mynokiablog.
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